Unknown pottery mold..?

[devlinanne]

I recieved this piece from my grandmother the other day, not knowing what it was and having no use for it. It seems to be pretty old, and some kind of pottery mold that goes over a fire or so. It has a mold for some type of animal, what I believe to be a young horse laying down in grass.
I tried image searching it, without succes. I also searced many different terms without any real succes. The best I could find is that it could be pottery redware mold of some kind. It only has one side, indicating it is not a two piece system.

Any help would be great. I would love to use it what it was made for! If I could figure it out, haha.

Thanks!

[KC]

Defnitely a beautifully ornate food mold.

These were extremely popular from late 1700's onward.  They were generally called redware molds.  They were used to mold aspics, gelatin, head cheese,  etc.  The more ornate your mold in these days made the lady of the house feel that much more special!  Molds were used to help preserve food and make it more presentable.

This is one of my favorite "historical foods" sites that shows some of the items made using food molds.
http://www.historicfood.com/Jellies.htm

A great article explaining that it wasn't about JELLO!
http://superbeefy.com/history-of-gelatin/